Arlington National Cemetary: After the Flag

1/31/2009

Getting Started, Storytelling

Storytelling for the kick- off program for Library Lovers Month for a County library this morning so I am up early - in the dark. I want to go over my stories, get my stuff together and primp.

But first - I have the settle.The computer is my settling place. I check my emails. See what's happened on my blog. Has anybody stopped by? And then - I travel. I surf.I never know what my jumping off place will be. Its random. This morning I stepped into cyber space from 37 Days. There was an email notice of a Life is a Verb Reading today from Patti in my email. It led me to Random Arts.

Random Arts is a bookstore and art space in Saluda, NC. I loved the GALLERY page. Will have to tell Betsy about the "button vases". We were talking just the other day about the button gardens we made when we were in Girl Scouts. (Betsy remembers that whole thing a bit more positively than I do. Hers must have looked better than mine. Ah, well!). Random Arts is just y kind of place. I know if I ever get to Saluda I am stoppping by.

Glancing down her blog listI settled on a journaling blog - Sending Pages Out To Dry. which whisked me to Atlanta This blog belongs to an interesting artist - a journaling writer and artist who makes artist books - now how right could that be for me?

Whoops. Its getting light outside. Out of time. Have to get to work. Storytelling this morning, you know.

Telling Stories

Its always a bit of a kick to walk into a gig and see my face on a poster.

This morning I told a family program of folktales - all seletced from library section 398.2. I enjoy these stories. They are old because they are good.

I chose tales from different cultures - China, Europe, The Middle East.

They are fun to tell.

Afterwards children came up to me:"I loved your stories." from a second grader."I liked the one about the tablecloth. She would not have to worry about cooking anymore." (The Old Woman and the North Wind) This from a girl who looked to be about nine or ten years old. Isn't that a great reaction to a story about a woman who has just been given a magic tablecloth that will give her delicious food whenever she tells the cloth to "Spread cloth spread."

A man who was there with a young child stopped me and asked for advice on "how to encourage her imagination.""Talk to her, tell her stories about you, your wife, your family. Bring her to the library and read to her. Let her make the pictures in her mind. Like you did listening to the storytelling this morning." His eyes got it. He nodded. "I gotcha."